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December 07, 2005

Wikis as a Repository of Legal Know-How

After writing about wikis on Monday, I received word of a project to use a public wiki to create a library of legal know-how. It's called Wikilaw and bills itself as "an open-content legal resource."

The project's founders, Aaron and Rob, describe themselves and their project like this:

Aaron and Rob graduated from a law school in New York. Realizing that they would not be completely satisfied with working for a corporate law firm or climbing the ivory towers of academia, they began exploring a series of ideas to transform the legal system in America.

Aaron was the former Editor in Chief of his law school's Law Review and Rob was arguably the school's top student and a Note Editor on the Law Review.

After much debate, the two agreed to start Wikilaw with the hope that legal information could be created collaboratively and freely shared among lawyers and other interested individuals. The two hope that the Wikilaw community will continue to grow and turn into a valuable resource for everyone.

Wikilaw is brand new but worth checking out for the concept alone. I expect there will be other, similar projects--if there aren't already--based on the fact that when I was at BlawgThink 2005, I heard a lot of talk about lawyers about using public wikis as a repository of legal knowledge.